7 ways to streamline your auto enrolment process · 2020. 1. 29. · more important points in...

7 ways to streamline your auto enrolment process

Whether you have staged or not, auto enrolment doesn’t have to be as costly, or as time consuming as you think.

Call 0844 815 5772 or visit iris.co.uk/autoenrolment to see how we can help you

Background to automatic enrolment

Automatic enrolment, part of the government’s workplace pension reforms, is being introduced to combat the issue that people are living longer and healthier lives but are saving less for their retirement. As the ratio of workers to those of a pensionable age continues to fall, the government has estimated that as many as seven million people are currently not saving enough for an adequate retirement income.

Legal information

This information doesn’t constitute financial, investment or professional advice and shouldn’t be relied on as such.

IRIS do not make any personal recommendation or give advice to employers and their workers on how to make investment decisions. If you are seeking this kind of advice we would suggest speaking with a qualified financial adviser.

As state pensions will be unable to bear the increasing numbers of retirees, The Pensions Act 2008 established new duties to redress this imbalance. Automatic enrolment as part of these changes, began to be rolled out amongst businesses in October 2012.

The changes brought about by the new legislation are complex and require early education and preparation to allow businesses to gain a full understanding of how to capitalise, adapt, and ensure compliance.

With 32,000 businesses staging during the 2014-2015 financial year, the numbers seeking support and advice about the legislative transition will increase considerably. The IRIS automatic enrolment solution has been adopted by over 1,850 organisations assessing 450,000 employees.

The challenge of auto enrolment


As you may already be aware, there are a great number of challenges that face all payroll and financial professionals when it comes to meeting your staging date. More often than not, many organisations find this to be a taxing period of which fines and government penalties loom over those that fail to comply. At IRIS, we found that there are three main areas that were paramount to streamlining the auto enrolment process. These are:

• Assessment of eligibility• Communications between the employer and the employee• The pension interface and compliance/interaction with the pension provider

These elements are not only required to correctly administer an auto enrolment process but they are also now required by law. The current total time that it takes, per month, to manually carry out these aspects would be approximately 3.5 days. This is shown below:

[Source: Centre for Economics and Business Research (CEBR) Survey - September 2013]

In addition to this is the cost and environmental impact that comes with the printing, processing and labour needed in order to comply with the auto enrolment procedure.



1. Simplify your payroll process

One of the main building blocks that makes up auto enrolment is your payroll process so getting this perfected and efficient will ultimately go a long way to slimming down the entire auto enrolment practise. The current manual system of running a payroll can be unnecessarily complicated and elongated. As you can see from the diagram below:

As you can see from the diagram above, IRIS devised a workflow that cuts out a vast majority of unnecessary procedures which can be achieved using the IRIS AE Suite ™. Reviewing the diagram above, it seems obvious and logical that to become more economical as a business, your payroll processes need to be reviewed and simplified.

Automation is ultimately the key to the success of this method as it enables you to adopt a mentality that better equips you to utilise a system that works for you and your business. With this in mind, it goes without saying that streamlined business processes will ultimately lead to a more speedy implementation of the auto enrolment legislation, amongst other changes possibly unrelated to your payroll.



2. Overcome insecure and inefficient communications

As was previously mentioned in regards to the amount of time and resources it takes in order to publish the payroll and auto enrolment communications. In addition to this is to then relay this information to the pension providers. Another way of streamlining the entire process is to ensure that you can overcome any insecure or inefficient communications methods.

Take financial institutions for example, such as banks or building societies. A bank would never email statements or financial documents to a customer or client due to the levels of confidentiality and security surrounding this type of document. An email simply isn’t secure enough.

Even if an employee was to only view their payslips at work, they may then leave their email open on their screen during a meeting or if they were to go out for lunch, thus leaving their financial details openly accessible for everyone to see. This then leaves the alternative, outdated form of communications: postal.

Postal communications aren’t the most cost effective for you as a business or indeed for the environment. Cutting down on the amount of direct mail and postal mail that you send as a company will greatly reduce costs, reduce your carbon footprint and actually increase efficiency.

Finally, increasing the perceived credibility of you as an organisation can be achieved by taking into account the safety and wellbeing of your employees’ and clients’ personal data. Providing a secure method to manage this data will go a long way to accomplishing this.



3. Reduce the cost of your communications

So now to look at the amount it actually takes to publish these communications, broken down to show the kind of money it takes to comply with. Costs can be as much as £1.75 per payslip (based on a division of resources, labour, posting and printing) which, for 100 employees would cost £175 per payroll run.

IRIS AE Suite™ features online publication technology which enables you to issue communications to clients and employees via the internet. This can then be accessed via the recipient’s email or on a smartphone.

Not only are the documents then accessible online but IRIS also stores all pension communications – a requirement of legislation from The Pensions Regulator, meaning that you as a company don’t have to worry about your, or your clients backups if/when it comes to an audit.

Find out more

Item Cost

1st Class Stamp £0.62

1 Laser Printed Copy £0.10

Stationary £0.14

Envelope £0.06

Labour Costs (printing, typing,

delivering etc)*

£0.83

*Based on 5 mins/payslip being processed by someone paid £10/h

http://www.iris.co.uk/cloud-suite/iris-openenrol-and-automatic-enrolment-module/



4. Prepare early and proactively

Arguably one of the most important steps that you can take when you are looking for ways to streamline your auto enrolment process is to ensure that you are prepared well in advance. As the proverb goes, “If you fail to prepare then prepare to fail”, this is the case with the new auto enrolment process. Giving yourself an early advantage, performing initial employee assessments for example and reviewing any current pension arrangements may save vital labour hours which could then be used up to rectify any issues or problems that may appear in the latter stages.

At IRIS, we have tried to help you out a little in this pre-emptive behaviour by coming up with a timeline that you can use to prepare for your staging date:



5. Seek expert advice

When the pension regulator introduced this new legislation, they did not presume that as a business, you would have to go it alone and be expected to accept the changes, deal with them and move on. In fact, the pensions regulator, as well as us here at IRIS actively encourage you to seek help as and when you need it.

It is quite easy to contact the pensions regulator, you can either access their online document library, get in touch with them via email or give them a call:

• Phone: 0845 600 1011• Email Address• Document Library

Accounting Web also have an excellent knowledge base of information on their website, based around the “No one left behind” campaign in regards to helping everyone through their auto enrolment. You can visit their website:

• Accounting Web

The IRIS KnowledgeBase has been set up to provide you with an archive of information. You can enter search queries or questions you may have to find the relevant info for you.

In addition to this is the IRIS AE Insight Page where you can create a plan to prepare for your staging date or download one of our other whitepapers.• Phone: 0844 815 5772• IRIS AE Suite™• IRIS KnowledgeBase• IRIS AE Insight Page

mailto:[email protected]

http://www.thepensionsregulator.gov.uk/doc-library.aspx

http://www.accountingweb.co.uk/auto-enrolment


http://www.iris.co.uk/support/knowledgebase/

http://www.iris.co.uk/insight/automatic-enrolment/

http://www.thepensionsregulator.gov.uk/

http://www.thepensionsregulator.gov.uk/







6. Avoid non-compliance fines

We know that no business in existence in the UK today wants, or can afford any form of fine or financial penalty and this is why one of the more important points in streamlining your auto enrolment process is to avoid these fines. The current fines are set out as in the table below:

In terms of the businesses that incur these fines, The Pension Regulator will issue a warning and a fixed fine of £400 if your business does not comply by your staging date. In addition to this, the regulator will then issue a daily fine, dependant on the amount of employees your company has, as you can see from the table above.

In the case of Dunelm Soft Furnishings ltd, they were unprepared for their staging date and thus did not comply with the regulations. The company were then forced to rectify the unpaid pension contributions to a total of £143,000. Clare Abrahams, Head of Auto Enrolment at Aon Employee Benefits stated that “Some businesses are experiencing problems with technology but they often find out too late”.

As previously mentioned, it is even more evident that having the correct software, such as the IRIS AE Suite™ and preparing well in advance can help you to avoid any unnecessary non-compliance fines.

You can read more about the Dunelm case here.

http://www.aon.com/unitedkingdom/employee-benefits/news/articles/dunelm-fined-getting-auto-enrolment-wrong.jsp



7. Take advantage of any possible special offers

The final step you can take to ensure that you are streamlining your auto enrolment process as efficiently and economically as possible is making sure that as a financial exercise, you are gaining the best outcome for yourself and your clients.

For more information regarding auto enrolment or the IRIS AE Suite™, visit our website or give us a call.

Call: 0844 815 5772

Email: [email protected]

Visit: IRIS Auto Enrolment Insights Page

Follow on Twitter: @IRISPayroll

You can get in touch with our sales team in order to find out about any offers on the IRIS AE Suite™ and how you can benefit from them.

“I was terrified of auto enrolment initially but the IRIS AE Suite™ made me change my mind about it, its so easy!”

Sandra Crawford; HR and Payroll Co-ordinator of Silverstone Circuits Ltd was, like many others, daunted by the prospecting auto enrolment looming over:




1. Simplify your payroll process- Simplify your process from as many as 10 down to a simple 3 steps and

automate processes where you can.

2. Overcome insecure and inefficient communications- Reduce price, time taken and carbon footprint to process your

communications and eradicate the possibility of leaking confidential information via insecure communications.

3. Reduce the cost of your communications- Save up to £1.75 per payslip by taking advantage of electronic solutions

allowing fast, effective and rapid delivering of payslips, P60s and pension communications.

4. Prepare early and proactively - “Fail to prepare then prepare to fail” – The handy timeline can be used

as a starting point to proactively manage your staging date and auto enrolment compliance.

5. Seek expert advice- There’s no need to go it alone, take advantage of the multitude of help

and advice available to you.

6. Avoid non-compliance fines- Ensuring that you are fully compliant with the legislation will ensure

that you aren’t caught out by fines.

7. Take advantage of any special offers- Get in touch today to inquire about any special offers on the IRIS AE

Suite™.

Your auto enrolment streamlining checklist

IRIS Automatic Enrolment Solutions

IRIS are UK payroll experts whose software is fully compliant with automatic enrolment legislation. IRIS have already assessed almost 400,000 employees for automatic enrolment. IRIS can help you prepare for automatic enrolment in the following ways:

Education

IRIS is holding ‘Understanding Automatic Enrolment’ seminars across the country, as well as online, to help educate you on the legislation surrounding automatic enrolment and what impact these changes will have your payroll and your company.

“The seminar was thoroughly useful and informative. Suddenly automatic enrolment seems so much clearer” Jodie Fox, Senior Operations Manager, Stressline

Compliant software

IRIS have developed the IRIS AE Suite™ to make complying with the new legislation as easy as 1,2,3. It works with all IRIS payroll software to make your automatic enrolment processes completely automatic.

1. Assess your employees with the IRIS AE Suite™. This can be done instantly each and every pay period.

2. Process your payroll with IRIS Software and send pension information automatically to providers such as NEST and NOW.

3. Instantly publish compliant pension communications to relevant employees. The software will work out which ones need to be sent and when so that you don’t have to. Employees will be able to access letters directly on their smartphone.

Relax – knowing you will be fully compliant with automatic enrolment legislation!


http://www.iris.co.uk/campaigns-sme/demo/iris-openenrol-and-automatic-enrolment-module-demo-id-2473

http://www.iris.co.uk/campaigns-sme/demo/iris-openenrol-and-automatic-enrolment-module-demo-id-2473

About IRIS

With 30 years' experience, IRIS provides business critical software and services to the UK SME sector and accountants in practice. Over 53,500 small and medium-sized companies including 15,500 accountancy practices rely on IRIS every day to run their business and collaborate, with around 82,000 end-users subscribing to IRIS cloud solutions.

IRIS Software Group is the number one solution provider for RTI and its software pays 14 percent of UK businesses that operate under PAYE. All customers receive the greatest choice of RTI payroll software and services managed under the brands IRIS and Earnie.

IRIS has developed a complete solution to help businesses prepare for automatic enrolment. This includes compliant payroll software, the IRIS Automatic Enrolment Module to handle your employee assessment, IRIS OpenEnrol to handle your communications, pension output files, training courses, free guides and more.

Get in touch today to see how IRIS can help you prepare for automatic enrolment.

Call us: 0844 815 5772

Email us: [email protected]

Visit us: iris.co.uk/autoenrolment

Follow us on Twitter: @IRISPayroll



7 ways to streamline your auto enrolment process · 2020. 1. 29. · more important points in...

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